Shakespeare Tours
There are many companies that offer tours that involve looking at the legendary William Shakespeare. These tours may be based in any place, such as a museum or a house that may be converted to a place that looks at the life of Shakespeare and allows a tour of his plays or his life. It is common for tours to be based in places where he was based himself. Such as London and Straford Upon Avon. Many see London as a base to see, as the wrote plays there and alos lived in the city. Some may also want to see the town of Straford Upon Avon where he grew up and owned a house. The town has become a place with a large tourism industry based on Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, 22 miles south east of Birmingham and 8 miles outh west of the county town, Warwick. It is the main town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers a much larger area than the town itself. The town is a popular tourist destination owing to its status as birthplace of the playwright and poet William Shakespeare, receiving about three million visitors a year from all over the world. Mnay tours allow people to visit the houses or places that the fmaous writer lived in or visited. Or houses of people he was connected to.
The town is located on the River Avon ("avon" being a Celtic synonym of "river"), on the banks of which stands the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Other tourist attractions within the town include five houses relating to Shakespeare's life, which are owned and cared for by The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. These include Hall's Croft (the one-time home of Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah, and her husband Dr. John Hall) and Nash's House,which stands alongside the site of another property, New Place, owned by Shakespeare himself, wherein died. Near to the town are Anne Hathaway's Cottage at Shottery, the home of Shakespeare's wife's family prior to her marriage, and Mary Arden's House. At the top end of Waterside is Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was baptised and is buried.
Henley Street is one of the oldest streets in Stratford-upon-Avon, where, in 1556 John Shakespeare bought a half-timbered farm house.
London Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot called Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.
Bishopsgate is a road and ward in the east part of the City of London, extending north from Gracechurch Street to Norton Folgate. It is named after one of the original seven gates in London Wall. The site of this gate is marked by a stone Bishop's Mitre, fixed high on a building, at the junction of Wormwood Street and Camomile Street with Bishopsgate.
Southwark or The Borough is an area of south-east London in the London Borough of Southwark, situated 1.5 miles east of Charing Cross. In 1599, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was erected on the Bankside in the Clink Liberty, though it burned down in 1613. A modern replica, also called the Globe, has been built near the original site. Southwark was also a favourite area for entertainment like bull and bear-baiting.
Find a Villa from Across Europe
Grand World Villas - Find a Villa from anywhere in the world
Grand Global Villas - Find Villas from Around the Globe
An Index with links to almost all our sites
Holiday
to - Great places to go on Holiday to
Holiday
to 2 - More Great places to go on Holiday to
Holiday to 3 - More places to go on Holiday to
Holiday to 4 - More places to go on Holiday to
Find some Cottages in Britain or Ireland and the world
A site stating what have been the world's largest empires ever
Find a Cottage in Britain or Ireland
Find more Cottages in Britain, Ireland, North America or the world